This three-year study is designed to assess the antecedents and dimensions of socioeconomic change from 1929 through the Great Depression to the end of WW II, and to identify the effects of such change in the family, life course, and generational relations. Data for the research were prepared from longitudinal archives at the Institure of Human Development and span four generations (Guidance Study, Berkeley): grandparent, birthdates 1865-1880; parent, 1890-1910; children or Sd, 1928-29; and grandchildren, post WW II. The study is organized in four phases: 1 - the social and cultural antecedents of the parental life course, social position, and family environment through 1929; II - the course of family change from 1929 through 1945; and its relation to pre-Depression factors and exonomic change (with emphasis on the Great Depression); III - socioeconomic change in the life course and relationships of parents and Ss up to 1970; and IV - a comparative assessment of socioeconomic change in the life course of the Ss and members of a slightly older cohort (born 1920-21, members of the Oakland Growth Study at the Institute), and in the relationships of these adults with their offspring. Since Phase I will been completed by the summer of 1974, this proposal pertains to research outlined in phases II-IV (internal analyses of the Oakland cohort have also been completed). Methods of analysis include systematic comparisons of subgroups defined by degree of socioeconomic change and SES; and multivariate techniques for the assessment of causal factors and linkages. Results from this longitudinal and comparative study should make a valuable contribution to general knowledge about social change in the family and lifr course, and more specifically to our understanding of the Depression and War experience in the lives of Americans. The impact of socioeconomic dislocations on family life and generational change, downward mobility and its psychosocial effects, and the middle years of the life span are relatively neglected fields of inquiry and constitute major foci of the proposed study.